Why Better Results Often Begin Long Before the Result
By Francis E. Madojemu
I recently watched a short video by Folajimi that stopped me.
Not because the subject was particularly unusual. He was talking about an apartment his company manages as a short-let property.
His company manages several apartments in the same building. They have broadly similar amenities—televisions, internet, inverters and the things one would ordinarily expect.
Yet one particular apartment performs very differently commercially.
According to Folajimi, it gets roughly three times as many bookings as the others.
It is also more expensive.
Even more remarkably, when people want that apartment and discover that it is unavailable, some apparently say, in effect:
Put us somewhere else in the building for now. We will wait for that particular apartment to become available.
Naturally, the other owners want to know why.
What does that apartment have that theirs doesn’t?
A better television?
Different internet?
Another inverter?
More furniture?
Folajimi’s answer was surprisingly simple.
Design.
The owner of that apartment had allowed the professional interior designer to do her work.
There wasn’t constant interference:
I don’t like that colour.
Change this.
Why does this cost so much?
Let’s reduce the design budget.
The professional was apparently given sufficient freedom to design the space properly.
And Folajimi said something that stayed with me:
“The apartment has not rested since.”
That is an extraordinary commercial statement.
Watch Folajimi’s original video here:
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/18F6yfe5xL/?mibextid=wwXIfr
But before I go any further, I need to make a confession.
I Learnt Some of This Rather Late
I am not writing this as someone who has spent the last thirty years perfectly implementing what I am about to describe.
Far from it.
I wish I had understood some of this earlier.
More importantly, I wish I had implemented what I understood much earlier.
I am an architect by training, which perhaps makes the admission even more uncomfortable.
It is possible to understand design professionally and still fail to apply design thinking sufficiently to other parts of life.
I can look back at things I have built, businesses I have been involved in, ministry, our home, facilities we have operated and projects I have led and recognise something:
Sometimes we had many of the right ingredients.
What we didn’t always have was a sufficiently intentional architecture connecting those ingredients to the outcome we wanted.
That is something we are only now trying to apply much more deliberately across our church, our home and our business interests.
So this is not an article written from the mountaintop.
It is closer to a field report from somebody who has begun seeing something differently.
And Folajimi’s apartment helped me see it more clearly.
Perhaps two organisations can possess almost the same resources and produce radically different results.
Perhaps the difference is not always what they have.
Perhaps the difference is how what they have has been designed.
DESIGN IS NOT DECORATION
When many people hear the word design, they think about aesthetics.
Colours.
Furniture.
Fonts.
Finishes.
Lighting.
Logos.
Those things matter.
But design is much bigger than appearance.
Design is intentionality applied to an outcome.
It asks:
What are we trying to make happen?
For whom?
What should they be able to do?
What should they encounter?
What should become easier?
What should become unnecessary?
What should they feel, understand or remember?
And then:
What must we deliberately arrange to make that outcome more likely?
That leads us from design to something even bigger.
Architecture.
ARCHITECTURE IS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS
Architecture, properly understood, is not merely buildings either.
Architecture asks how the different parts of something must relate for the whole to work.
A beautiful hotel room is design.
But:
arrival + parking + reception + room + electricity + internet + housekeeping + food + security + payment + complaint resolution + departure + follow-up
is an architecture.
A church building may be beautiful.
But:
road signage + parking + welcome + children’s check-in + seating + sound + worship + preaching + prayer + toilets + security + follow-up
creates the experience of attending that church.
A business may have excellent employees.
But:
people + roles + information + authority + tools + processes + standards + accountability + feedback
determines whether those employees can consistently produce excellent work.
The pieces matter.
But the relationships between the pieces matter too.
That is architecture.
And architecture must eventually become a system.
SYSTEMS MAKE GOOD INTENTIONS REPEATABLE
You can create excellence once through extraordinary effort.
That is not yet a system.
A system asks:
Who does what?
When?
Using what?
According to what standard?
Who checks it?
What information is recorded?
What happens when something fails?
Who has authority to fix it?
How do we know whether it worked?
A system converts intention into repeatability.
So the chain begins:
PURPOSE ↓ DESIGN ↓ ARCHITECTURE ↓ SYSTEM
But systems are not the end.
Systems eventually disappear into something else.
Experience.
PEOPLE DO NOT EXPERIENCE YOUR ORGANISATIONAL CHART
Your customer does not experience your management structure.
Your church visitor does not experience your committee.
Your hotel guest does not experience your operations manual.
Your child does not experience your parenting philosophy.
They experience what all those things produce.
The customer experiences how quickly somebody answered WhatsApp.
The guest experiences the toilet.
The visitor experiences whether somebody noticed them standing alone.
The bride experiences what happened when the electricity failed during her reception.
The swimmer experiences the pool.
The child experiences children’s church.
The market woman experiences whether the payment actually arrived.
Every system eventually becomes somebody’s experience.
And experiences influence behaviour.
People stay.
People leave.
People buy.
People return.
People recommend.
People complain.
People tell friends.
People wait for one particular apartment even though another apartment is available in the same building.
That is where Folajimi’s story becomes much bigger than Airbnb.
Design shaped experience. Experience shaped preference. Preference shaped behaviour. Behaviour shaped economic results.
But there is another layer.
Because human beings don’t remember experiences evenly.
We remember moments.
THE POPSICLE HOTLINE: DESIGNING THE MOMENT
The Magic Castle Hotel in Los Angeles has become a fascinating case study in memorable customer experience.
One of its best-known features is the Popsicle Hotline.
Beside the swimming pool is a red telephone.
Pick it up and someone answers.
Order a popsicle and a member of staff appears carrying complimentary popsicles to the pool.
It is delightfully excessive for something so small.
And that is precisely why people remember it.
But reducing the Magic Castle experience to the Popsicle Hotline misses the point.
The hotel surrounds guests with a collection of small, thoughtful touches.
Complimentary snacks.
Soft-serve ice cream.
Complimentary drinks.
A laundry service where clothes can be washed, dried, folded and returned.
And a hospitality culture that repeatedly appears in guests’ descriptions of the hotel.
The popsicle is not the system.
It is a memorable moment inside a larger experience architecture.
At first, this seems almost contradictory to Folajimi’s apartment.
Folajimi’s story appears to say:
Design the whole thing properly.
The Magic Castle story appears to say:
One disproportionately memorable moment can change how people perceive the whole experience.
But these ideas are not contradictory.
They are complementary.
The architecture makes the experience possible.
The moment makes the experience memorable.
This gives us an important principle:
REMOVE THE FRICTION. BUILD THE SYSTEM. DESIGN THE PEAK.
You cannot compensate for dysfunction with popsicles.
If the room is filthy, the booking has been lost, the electricity doesn’t work, the toilet smells and the staff are rude, a popsicle becomes theatre covering failure.
But the opposite mistake is also possible.
An organisation can spend its entire existence fixing problems.
Every meeting is about what went wrong.
Every investment repairs another pothole.
Eventually everything becomes acceptable.
Nothing becomes remarkable.
There must come a point where we ask:
What are we deliberately creating that somebody will remember?
That takes us further:
EXPERIENCE ↓ MOMENT ↓ MEMORY
And memory influences behaviour.
COLDHUBS: WHAT IF THE PRODUCT IS NOT ENOUGH?
This becomes even more interesting when we move from hospitality to economic development.
Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu’s ColdHubs story in Nigeria provides an important example.
His journey did not begin simply with someone deciding to manufacture a clever refrigerator.
It grew out of listening to farmers and encountering the enormous problem of post-harvest loss.
Produce was being grown.
Farmers had done the difficult work.
The harvest existed.
Yet value was disappearing because produce could not remain fresh long enough to reach buyers.
The obvious answer might appear to be:
Build cold storage.
ColdHubs developed solar-powered walk-in cold rooms for food markets, farms and produce collection centres.
But the deeper lesson is that the cold room alone is not enough.
A technology can exist and still fail to create transformation.
People must understand it.
They must trust it.
They must know how to use it.
Its economics must work for them.
It has to fit into the realities of how they already trade.
That is why the wider ColdHubs story matters—the surrounding education, visual communication, crates, ice and complementary services required to make cooling useful and adoptable.
One particularly important detail is the use of comics and visual education to help people understand.
That should not be dismissed as marketing collateral.
It points to something much bigger.
EDUCATION CAN BE INFRASTRUCTURE.
We normally think of infrastructure as roads, electricity, warehouses, ports and telecommunications.
But what good is access to something people don’t understand?
A market woman may have a smartphone and still not know how live commerce could enlarge her market.
A farmer may stand beside cold storage and still not understand how paying for cooling changes the economics of spoilage.
A small-business owner may have access to artificial intelligence and use it for almost nothing economically productive.
A church may own sophisticated technology and never redesign its ministry around what that technology makes possible.
Access is not adoption.
Something must happen between the two.
Often that something is education.
So another equation emerges:
ACCESS + EDUCATION + SYSTEM = ADOPTION.
THE PROSPERITY PARADOX
This connects with one of the most important ideas I have encountered in thinking about African development.
In The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty, Clayton Christensen, Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon challenge a common way of thinking about development.
We often begin with what poorer societies lack.
Roads.
Schools.
Hospitals.
Electricity.
Institutions.
Capital.
Naturally, we conclude that prosperity will come when those deficiencies are supplied.
But their work draws attention to market-creating innovation: innovation that makes previously complicated or expensive products and services simple, affordable and accessible to people who could not previously consume them.
These people are described as nonconsumers.
Not necessarily people without desire.
They may simply be people for whom the existing solution is too expensive, inaccessible, inconvenient or complicated.
The fascinating part is what happens when an entrepreneur genuinely tries to serve them.
Very often, the infrastructure required to serve the new market does not yet exist.
Distribution may be missing.
Payment systems may be inadequate.
Workers may need training.
Suppliers may need developing.
Consumer understanding may need creating.
Logistics may have to be built.
And suddenly things that looked like somebody else’s responsibility become part of the innovation.
That gives us another important principle:
SOMETIMES BUILDING WHAT IS MISSING BECOMES PART OF THE BUSINESS.
This is particularly relevant in emerging economies.
In a mature environment, a company may be able to say:
That isn’t our business.
Someone else handles distribution.
Someone else provides reliable power.
Someone else trains the workforce.
Someone else processes payments.
Someone else handles logistics.
But where those systems are weak or absent, successful innovators frequently have to create a much wider value network around the product.
The innovation therefore becomes more than the object being sold.
It becomes a system.
EFOSA OJOMO’S IMPORTANT INFRASTRUCTURE QUESTION
This argument became even more interesting to me when Efosa Ojomo published a short piece in August 2026 titled “A Short Note on Making Infrastructure Useful.”
His distinction is deceptively simple:
There is a difference between infrastructure that exists and infrastructure that works.
An airport can exist.
A road can exist.
A school can exist.
A conference centre can exist.
A studio can exist.
But the real economic question is not merely whether the physical asset is standing.
The question is:
WHAT CAN PEOPLE RELIABLY DO BECAUSE IT EXISTS?
That word reliably matters.
If an airport exists but flights are so unpredictable that businesses cannot confidently schedule around them, part of the economic usefulness of the infrastructure has been lost.
Infrastructure creates value partly because it creates predictability.
Predictability allows planning.
Planning encourages investment.
Reliability creates trust.
And trust itself has economic value.
Ojomo therefore makes a point that deserves far more attention, particularly across Africa:
More infrastructure is not itself the ultimate outcome.
Economic participation is.
Productivity is.
Predictability is.
The challenge is to design the innovations, markets and systems that make infrastructure genuinely useful.
That takes our argument one step further.
Perhaps the measure of an asset is not:
“Do we have it?”
Perhaps it is:
“What can people now reliably accomplish because we have it?”
That is a radically different way of looking at infrastructure.
WHEN CAPABILITY BECOMES ACCESSIBLE
Now consider what has happened over the last twenty years.
A reasonably capable smartphone contains tools that once required entire organisations.
Camera.
Video recorder.
Editing equipment.
Publishing platform.
Mapping.
Banking.
Communication.
Library.
Marketplace.
Broadcast channel.
Artificial intelligence is accelerating this further.
Canva has made many design capabilities available to people who previously would have needed specialised software and professional training.
Mobile payments have reduced transaction barriers.
Social platforms have given individuals distribution capabilities once reserved for newspapers, radio and television stations.
Increasingly:
CAPABILITIES THAT BELONGED TO INSTITUTIONS ARE BECOMING ACCESSIBLE TO INDIVIDUALS.
This is one of the great economic stories of our time.
But once again:
Access does not guarantee productive use.
Giving someone scissors does not mean they will cut the rope.
That is why another metaphor I recently encountered has become so important to me.
A woman struggles against ropes holding her back.
Eventually she reaches a pair of scissors.
Surely she will use them to free herself.
Instead she puts them into a suitcase.
And then we discover:
the suitcase already contains other pairs of scissors.
Books.
Conferences.
Advice.
Technology.
Contacts.
Ideas.
Training.
AI.
Smartphones.
Facilities.
Capital.
Perhaps some of our biggest problems are no longer caused simply by what we don’t have.
Perhaps we are surrounded by unused capability.
The question therefore changes from:
What else do we need?
to:
WHAT CAN WHAT WE ALREADY HAVE BE DESIGNED TO DO?
THE STALL DIDN’T DISAPPEAR. IT ACQUIRED A CAMERA.
This is where live commerce becomes particularly interesting to me.
For generations, commerce for millions of small traders has depended heavily on physical location.
You have a stall.
People walk past.
Some stop.
Some buy.
Your market is largely determined by geography.
But put a smartphone in front of that stall.
Suddenly the seller can demonstrate a product to someone who is nowhere near the market.
Someone watching can share the link.
Another person can buy.
The transaction can travel farther than the seller.
So I have begun describing it this way:
THE STALL DIDN’T DISAPPEAR.
IT ACQUIRED A CAMERA.
And:
THE MARKETPLACE IS BECOMING THE STUDIO.
But again, the camera is not the innovation.
If we simply hand traders cameras and say “Go live,” we have confused tools with architecture.
The actual architecture might be:
Seller ↓ Education ↓ Product preparation ↓ Story and demonstration ↓ Camera ↓ Live audience ↓ Shareable link ↓ Payment ↓ Fulfilment ↓ Customer data ↓ Reusable content ↓ Follow-up ↓ Repeat customer
Now we have something different.
We have redesigned access to market.
The seller does not merely need technology.
She needs capability.
She needs education.
She needs confidence.
She needs an audience.
She needs payment infrastructure.
She needs fulfilment.
She needs someone to help her understand what worked.
Again:
The product is not enough.
The architecture matters.
NUSTREAMS: OUR OWN LABORATORY
This is where the argument becomes personal again.
My wife and I are involved with NuStreams, a conference and culture facility in Ibadan, Nigeria.
Over the years, the facility has accumulated significant physical assets and capabilities: event halls, meeting and hospitality spaces, a swimming pool, food and beverage operations, a studio, internet connectivity, screens, production equipment and other infrastructure.
For a long time, the most obvious commercial question was essentially:
How do we get more people to rent or use these facilities?
That is a legitimate question.
But I increasingly think it may not be the most powerful one.
Efosa Ojomo’s infrastructure question gives me a better one:
WHAT CAN PEOPLE RELIABLY DO BECAUSE NUSTREAMS EXISTS?
And then:
WHAT CAN THESE ASSETS BE ARCHITECTED TO MAKE POSSIBLE?
Those questions are beginning to change how we think.
A studio is no longer merely a room containing production equipment.
A hall is not merely square metres available for rent.
A swimming pool is not merely water into which people pay to enter.
A Saturday is not merely another date on the calendar.
Internet connectivity is not merely Wi-Fi.
The question is what these things can become when deliberately connected.
We are currently exploring, among other things, how NuStreams can become part of a physical environment for live commerce—allowing local businesses and traders to learn how to present products, tell their stories, demonstrate what they sell and reach markets beyond their immediate geography.
Alongside that is BridgeWorks, an emerging capability-building and outreach initiative, and a wider commitment we describe as Education for Life.
The idea is still being built.
We have not perfected it.
We don’t yet know everything that will work.
That is important for me to say.
NUSTREAMS IS NOT THE SUCCESS STORY IN THIS ARTICLE.
IT IS THE LABORATORY.
We are beginning to ask whether assets we already possess can be redesigned and recombined to create capabilities we previously did not see.
And that may be one of the most important lessons for me personally:
Stewardship is not merely preserving what you have.
It may also involve discovering what what you have could become.
WHAT ABOUT THE POPCORN?
We have even been discussing something as ordinary as complimentary popcorn around the swimming pool.
On the surface, that sounds trivial.
Give swimmers popcorn.
But design thinking forces a different question:
What behaviour are we trying to create?
Suppose the architecture becomes:
Pool visit ↓ Warm welcome ↓ Complimentary popcorn ↓ People relax and stay longer ↓ Popcorn naturally creates demand for drinks ↓ Food and beverage purchases increase ↓ Families associate the pool with an enjoyable experience ↓ They return and recommend it
Then popcorn is no longer merely free food.
It has become a designed behavioural trigger inside an experience architecture.
Will it work?
We don’t know yet.
That is precisely the point.
We test it.
Measure it.
Learn.
Redesign.
Because design is not a one-time act of inspiration.
THE ARCHITECTURE MUST LEARN
Results are not merely the end of the system.
Results are information about the system.
Folajimi’s booking rates contain information.
ColdHubs’ adoption contains information.
Poolside drink sales contain information.
A live-commerce broadcast contains information.
Church attendance patterns contain information.
Customer complaints contain information.
Children asking their parents to return somewhere contain information.
So the architecture must eventually become circular.
PURPOSE ↓ DESIGN ↓ ARCHITECTURE ↓ SYSTEM ↓ EXPERIENCE ↓ MOMENT ↓ MEMORY ↓ BEHAVIOUR ↓ RESULTS ↓ DATA & LEARNING ↺ REDESIGN
That is a living system.
AND THIS ISN’T ONLY ABOUT BUSINESS
I increasingly see applications in our church.
What is the purpose of a Sunday service?
If we know that, what should the experience be?
What should happen from the moment somebody approaches the property?
What happens to a first-time visitor?
What happens to their children?
Can they find where they are going?
Can they hear?
Do they understand what is happening?
Does somebody notice them?
What happens after they leave?
The same applies to our homes.
Every environment encourages some behaviours and discourages others.
Where do people naturally gather?
Does the dining table invite conversation?
Does the arrangement of a home encourage isolation or interaction?
Where are devices used?
What is easy?
What is difficult?
We are constantly being formed by environments and systems, including systems nobody deliberately designed.
Which means failing to design something doesn’t mean it has no design.
It may simply mean that:
ACCIDENT DESIGNED IT FOR US.
SCRIPTURE HAS MORE TO SAY ABOUT THIS THAN WE SOMETIMES REALISE
I don’t want to attach Bible verses to a management theory merely to make it sound Christian.
The biblical story itself contains profound patterns of purpose, design, architecture, craftsmanship, systems and memory.
Genesis begins with God bringing order.
There is sequence.
Separation.
Environment.
Function.
Fruitfulness.
Evaluation.
“And God saw that it was good.”
God does not merely create things.
He creates relationships between things.
When God instructs Noah to build the ark in Genesis 6, He does not simply say:
Build something large enough to float.
There are materials.
Dimensions.
Levels.
Openings.
A door.
Purpose determines architecture.
When God instructs Moses concerning the Tabernacle, a recurring idea appears:
the pattern.
Exodus 25:9 says:
“According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it.”
Before construction comes pattern.
Before execution comes intention.
Before building comes design.
And then there is Bezalel.
In Exodus 31, God describes a man filled with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, understanding, knowledge and workmanship for the task he was called to perform.
That matters.
Craftsmanship is not spiritually inferior work.
Design intelligence is not outside God’s interests.
Excellence in making can itself be an expression of divine gifting.
MOSES HAD THE RIGHT MISSION AND THE WRONG SYSTEM
Exodus 18 may be one of Scripture’s great organisational-design stories.
Moses is called.
Moses has authority.
Moses has the people.
And yet Jethro watches the system and tells him:
“The thing that thou doest is not good.”
One man is attempting to carry too much of the decision-making burden.
The mission is right.
The leader is right.
The system is wrong.
That distinction is enormously important.
YOU CAN HAVE THE RIGHT MISSION
AND THE WRONG SYSTEM.
Prayer does not automatically make poor architecture good.
Sincerity does not make an unscalable system scalable.
Jethro’s counsel is fundamentally architectural.
Redesign responsibility.
Establish levels.
Delegate.
Create criteria.
Let Moses handle what genuinely requires Moses.
The solution is not greater effort from Moses.
The solution is:
BETTER ARCHITECTURE AROUND MOSES.
ACTS 6: WHEN GROWTH EXPOSED A DESIGN PROBLEM
The early church discovered something similar.
The number of disciples was increasing.
But growth exposed a problem.
Some widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution.
Notice what the apostles did not do.
They did not dismiss the complaint as carnality.
They did not merely preach about unity.
They did not simply announce another prayer meeting.
They redesigned the system.
Responsibilities were clarified.
Qualified people were selected.
The distribution problem received appropriate leadership.
The apostles protected their primary responsibilities of prayer and the ministry of the Word.
Then Acts 6:7 records:
“And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly…”
The spiritual mission and organisational architecture were not enemies.
Better architecture protected the mission.
GOD ALSO DESIGNS MEMORY
There is another biblical dimension that takes us back to the Popsicle Hotline—but much deeper.
When Israel crossed the Jordan, Joshua instructed representatives of the tribes to take stones from the river and establish a memorial.
Why?
Joshua 4 explains that when children later asked:
“What mean ye by these stones?”
the story would be told.
The experience had ended.
But the memory was intentionally preserved.
The Passover operates similarly.
So does Communion.
God understands something about human beings:
WE LIVE THROUGH EVENTS,
BUT WE ARE FORMED BY REMEMBERED MEANING.
That gives us a profound biblical basis for thinking about moments and memory.
The purpose is not gimmickry.
It is not emotional manipulation.
It is recognising that human beings remember experiences through meaning-rich moments.
THE COMPLETE DESIGN & ARCHITECTURE SYSTEM
So where does all of this leave us?
Folajimi’s apartment teaches us:
DESIGN THE WHOLE.
ColdHubs teaches us:
ARCHITECT AROUND THE REAL PROBLEM.
The Magic Castle Hotel teaches us:
DESIGN THE MEMORABLE MOMENT.
The Prosperity Paradox teaches us:
SOMETIMES YOU MUST BUILD WHAT THE MARKET IS MISSING.
Efosa Ojomo’s infrastructure work reminds us:
DON’T MERELY ASK WHETHER INFRASTRUCTURE EXISTS. ASK WHAT PEOPLE CAN RELIABLY DO BECAUSE IT EXISTS.
Digital technology teaches us:
DEMOCRATISE ACCESS.
Education teaches us:
ACCESS WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING MAY NEVER BECOME ADOPTION.
Live commerce teaches us:
REDESIGN ACCESS TO THE MARKET.
NuStreams is teaching us:
REIMAGINE WHAT EXISTING ASSETS CAN BECOME.
Scripture teaches us:
PURPOSE, PATTERN, ORDER, CRAFTSMANSHIP, DELEGATION, STEWARDSHIP AND MEMORY MATTER.
Put together, the framework looks like this:
PURPOSE
Why should this exist?
↓
DESIGN
What outcome are we intentionally trying to create?
↓
ARCHITECTURE
What must work together for that outcome to become possible?
↓
SYSTEM
How will it happen consistently rather than occasionally?
↓
EXPERIENCE
What does the person actually encounter?
↓
MOMENT
What becomes disproportionately meaningful or remarkable?
↓
MEMORY
What travels home with them?
↓
BEHAVIOUR
What do they now do differently?
↓
RESULTS
What measurable consequence follows?
↓
DATA & LEARNING
What is reality telling us?
↓
REDESIGN
What must change?
And running alongside the architecture:
ACCESS + EDUCATION
because people cannot benefit fully from a system they cannot reach, understand or use.
STOP SHOUTING AT THE RESULTS
This may be the most practical conclusion.
When results disappoint us, our instinct is often to attack the result.
Sales are low.
Sell harder.
Attendance is down.
Invite more people.
Staff are underperforming.
Warn them again.
Customers aren’t returning.
Advertise more.
People aren’t using the technology.
Buy newer technology.
But results are downstream.
Perhaps we need to walk upstream.
RESULTS ← BEHAVIOUR ← MEMORY ← MOMENTS ← EXPERIENCE ← SYSTEM ← ARCHITECTURE ← DESIGN ← PURPOSE
Sometimes the problem we are fighting downstream was designed upstream.
That means one of the most powerful leadership questions may be:
WHAT ARE OUR CURRENT RESULTS TELLING US ABOUT OUR DESIGN?
BEFORE YOU BUY ANOTHER THING
This brings me back to my own journey.
Before another:
building,
camera,
screen,
software subscription,
employee,
consultant,
programme,
department,
piece of equipment—
perhaps we should ask:
HAVE WE FULLY ARCHITECTED WHAT WE ALREADY HAVE?
That question now confronts me personally.
In business.
In ministry.
At home.
I wish I had understood it earlier.
I wish I had implemented it earlier.
But regret is not a strategy.
Learning is useful only when it changes what we do next.
So perhaps stewardship is bigger than possessing what God has placed in our hands.
Perhaps stewardship includes understanding it.
Developing it.
Connecting it.
Designing it.
And building the systems through which its potential can become productive.
Folajimi’s story began with several apartments in the same building.
Similar resources.
Different design.
Different experience.
Different behaviour.
Different results.
Perhaps some of us don’t need another asset yet.
Perhaps we need to go back and look carefully at what is already in our hands.
And ask:
WHAT COULD THIS BECOME
IF WE DESIGNED IT BETTER?
I learnt that question later than I would have liked.
But late is still a good time to learn.
And an even better time to begin.
— Francis E. Madojemu
REFERENCES & FURTHER READING
Folajimi — original short-let apartment/design video
The video that prompted this article and the opening case study:
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/18F6yfe5xL/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Efosa Ojomo — “A Short Note on Making Infrastructure Useful”
Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, 26 August 2026.
https://www.christenseninstitute.org/blog/a-short-note-on-making-infrastructure-useful/
Clayton M. Christensen, Efosa Ojomo & Karen Dillon — The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty
For further material on market-creating innovation and nonconsumption:
https://www.christenseninstitute.org/resources/topic/global-prosperity/market-creating-innovations/
Christensen Institute — “What Is the Prosperity Paradox?”
An accessible introduction to the argument around nonconsumption, market creation, infrastructure and prosperity:
https://www.christenseninstitute.org/blog/what-is-the-prosperity-paradox-a-refresher-on-the-key-to-ending-poverty/
Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu — “Solar Solution for Agriculture: The ColdHubs Story”
TEDxIkenegbu Salon / TEDx Talks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2L2o_wW0v8
Magic Castle Hotel — Guest Experience
For the Popsicle Hotline and the wider hospitality experience discussed in this article:
https://magiccastlehotel.com/
Chip Heath & Dan Heath — The Power of Moments
For the wider framework around deliberately creating defining and memorable experiences.
The Holy Bible
Genesis 1; Genesis 6:14–16; Exodus 18; Exodus 25:8–9; Exodus 31:1–5; Joshua 4:1–7; Acts 6:1–7.
